Architect Factory – Agile Design: Best Practices

Thanks for everyone attending the Architect Factory last week, especially everyone that attended my presentation. Great participation and great questions – Thanks.

As promised – below are the slides from the talk:

P.S. I’m still trying to figure out what happened to the video recording of the session. Will update the post as soon as the issue will get resolved.

Architect Certification

Currently in the Software Industry there is no such thing as an “Architect Certification”. Yes, I know, that there some that claim to be like OCM (Oracle Certified Enterprise Architect/Master) or MCA (Microsoft Certified Architect), but they are concentrated on a certain technology or certain aspects of an architect.

In my opinion, to be an architect means that you should be a generalist enough to know a wide range of technologies (not only .NET or Java) and to be able to make an educated decision when and how to use them.

Pick a right tool for the job!

An architect should be bold and well spoken and be able to convey his/hers opinion to the team, the company and the management. He should not rely on his old achievements to support his “respect”. He should be able to defend his ideas at any moment of time by providing a reasonable explanation and a proof that the chosen way is the best one at this moment of time.

In simple words – an Architect should be “Bull**it-free” (an opposite to “full of bull**it”).

The only way to certify a person to be a “Bull**it-free” is to put him on a spot in front of a large audience with a wide variety of knowledge , technologies and experience and let him defend his decisions. This is the best way to see what this person worth.

So, if you want to be a great Architect, get out there, start contributing to the community. Start with the local user groups and continue making your way up to the conferences. Get visible!

What do you think?